Saturday, October 20, 2007

The Paladin Community

Looking over the comments on Threat Reduction for Retribution, it seems that people on the outside don't really understand the paladin community. You see comments like "First you asked for X, and now you're asking for Y?"

The paladin community is the most fractured of all the classes. There are four main factions: Holy, Protection, Retribution, and Hybrid. The different factions want different--often opposite--things and that leads to the confusing nature of paladin feedback. Each side generally champions one tree, and does not really care about the others. The only exception are the Hybrids, who generally support all three trees, but oppose efforts to overspecialize them.

The next complication is that the Holy faction is at war with the Retribution faction. Retribution derides Holy as "healbots", and Holy calls Retribution "retnoobs". If I can indulge in some armchair psychology, the reason both these factions are at each other's throats is because a paladin is both melee and healing/support. Protection and Hybrids still try do both melee and support, though in different ways. But Holy gave up melee, and Retribution gave up healing, and by attacking each other, they try to convince themselves that what they sacrificed was not of value.

So for example, the Retribution faction asked for threat reduction and increased DPS in raids. The Holy faction opposes out of habit. Protection doesn't really care, and the Hybrids are generally supportive.

Then Retribution gets permanent threat reduction, and the Retribution faction is happy. However, the way the threat reduction is implemented hurts the Hybrid ideal, and thus the Hybrids are the paladins objecting.

The final complication is race. Alliance paladins generally view the Blood Elves as interlopers, and the Blood Elves are more than happy to antagonize them back. As well, a large percentage of vocal Blood Elf paladins are Horde raiders who rerolled after seeing the effect of Alliance paladin healers. Where the Alliance paladins were sort of "pushed" to the healing side when they started raiding, the Blood Elves embraced it from the very beginning, and are often the most militant of the Holy faction. Ironically, the Horde-specific Seal of Blood is extremely good for Retribution, a fact which seriously annoys the predominantly Alliance Retribution faction.

So that's a quick guide to the paladin community, and why different paladins complain about different buffs/nerfs. I belong to the Hybrid faction, and thus I'm generally supportive of all three trees, but not of talents that overemphasize one aspect of the paladin at the expense of the others.

As a Paladin who represents a rather small amount of Paladins overall - a full Protection spec'd tank for 25 mans, I have to say that I think the change to Fanaticism is fine.

I do not think the Retribution tree should expect to be capable of tanking - sorry hybrids. I don't expect to be able to heal or do damage when I'm spec'd Protection and because I have baseline healing spells and maybe some off-healing gear. Full Retribution Paladins should not expect to be able to tank just because they wear plate. (Neither should Arms/Fury Warriors.) Tanks (even Druids tanks) are always at the bottom of the meters. And why would a tank expect to compete with DPS classes? It's ridiculous.

For the most part, neither Retribution Paladins nor Arms/Fury Warriors should be even off-tanking content beyond Heroics (or maybe Karazhan - though in my experience, non-Protection specs begin to have issues in the second half of Kara.) Not to say that it's impossible, especially if you're over-geared for an instance, but it comes down to two things. First of all, it makes it substantially harder on healers because you would like to be able to both deal damage and tank and second, it messes with class balance and raid composition.

If you're trying to main tank, you've probably swapped your 2h for a sword and board, seriously gimping your DPS anyhow, which somewhat goes against what I'm saying - but in endgame you do what you're spec'd to do. I understand that pre-raid people would like to be versatile, but these are changes aimed at raiders.

Protection is fine as it is until you get to 25 man content - the 10% stamina? For raiders. You can go Retribution on any instance and it doesn't matter if you pull aggro, because you can take the damage - the passive threat reduction? For raiders, who, if they pull aggro (even in plate) will get 1-shot.

It's similar to the reason why most main-tanks now are Tauren Warriors. In min/max terms, they're the best. The difference is that I spec'd to tank, you spec'd to deal damage. 2.3 lets both of us do what we respectively chose on a degree that's competitive with other classes. Now I'll be a very serious alternative to a Warrior or Druid tank. You'll be serious competition for melee DPS classes - I see no reason why you should EXPECT to be able to tank or off-tank.

Both the Protection and Retribution trees got serious bumps with 2.3, and I feel that people need to let these changes go live and see how they work before complaining. Change takes time, especially when dealing with class balance.

The only thing I would add to your comments is that retribution is even further fractionalized into two more camps. There are a large number of Retribution paladins who want a big increase to personal dps. Not to be stereotypical, but these are usually the hardcore PvP retribution pallys (who didn't care about threat reduction as it was). Then there are the raiding retribution paladins, who typically are in favor of group buffing abilities rather than raw power. This doesn't help the problems that ret has to begin with.

I guess this is what we truly call a Holy War. I'm holy for now, but I'm sure I will be protection in the future and who knows, maybe retribution as well. So I'm one of those who wish that paladins are imba in every single tree ;)

Healing leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate is the path to the Dark Side.

Holy spec is the Dark Side and needs to be nerfed. I say this because in my raids i watch healing (both overheal and regular heal) and notice that paladins are doing one of two things -topping healing meters or (rarely) off-tanking.

And in your minds, youre probably wondering what class and spec i am. Im a holy spec paladin and i beleve that holy spec is TOO STRONG and forces players to spec holy in order to utilize its awesome (but evil) powers. If holy were a bit weaker, players and guilds would be encouraged to look at the other specs as viable alternatives, or (developers forbid) attempt to use paladins in their hybrid role.

Until holy gets another downgrade, nothing serious mind you, no amount of retribution or protection buffs are going to encourge raiders and guilds to respec since the effectiveness of holy is still a force to be reckoned with (unlike reckoning).

"If holy were a bit weaker, players and guilds would be encouraged to look at the other specs as viable alternatives, or (developers forbid) attempt to use paladins in their hybrid role." - Lightshield@Shadowmoon

..or drop Paladins from raids completely? What's left for the guild to desire of a Paladin when the third and 'only useful' talent tree is nerfed to match the other two? The alternative is that at least one of the non-Holy specs is raid worthy and the fact that Holy is deemed better is irrelevant.

In all honesty, if I were in a guild that would force any spec/class (my toon or another's) to sit out of a raid I'd leave and find a good guild.

Now, I'm fine with a guild that would look at you funny if you specced contrary to the norm, but Holy isn't the only raid-worthy Paladin spec. And if you played your spec well, I think you'd find the opinion of your guild change pretty quick.

Yes, Paladins make very good healers, but I'd hardly say you are severely over powered as such. As I understand it, you heal a little bit, quickly, forever. The manner in which, by design, a Paladin heals is more advantageous than the scattered benefits from Holy spec talents. (Not sure if that last sentence says exactly what I want, but I'm lacking words at the moment.. says the author of a TLDR.) But this is coming from a mage, so take it with a bag of salt.

Your worthiness to be in a raid has much more to do with your ability to play your toon effectively in whatever spec you choose. That means having the appropriate gear for the spec, filling the appropriate role for the spec, and maximizing the purpose of your spec (heals, dps, threat, utility, ..).

You should always look at other specs as viable alternatives - most especially if you are unhappy with Holy.

Don't underestimate the power of.. *cough* ..utility.

--Utility: Crowd Control, Interrupts, Indirect Damage/Damage by Proxy, etc. Pretty much anything outside of the standard goals of 'healing', 'dealing damage directly', and 'generating threat.' At least, this is as I use the term - sorry to confuse it if there is a more widely accepted definition.

I'm pretty sure this type of thing developed when Blizzard first revamped the Holy tree---you used to be able to put hmm, 11 points in and nab all the nifty stuff, and then dump the rest into Ret in Vanilla WoW.

Hybrid play requires more or less balancing your talent point distribution between 2 or more trees designed to do 2 different things. To the best of my knowledge, the Shockadin build is the only standard hybrid build. The farther you go into each tree, the more "pure" (insert tree purpose here) you are.

Right now, I'm 40/21/0, so I'm pretty much a "pure" healer who can take a hit or two if a trash mob wants to take a swing at me. I could respec to a more hybrid build and work on a build/gear that gimps my healing some but lets me off-tank and off-heal melee classes, but I honestly prefer healing. I rolled a paladin back when that was all they did in raids and leveled it holy. Yeah it takes forever to kill something, and I can't really tank anything worth a crap, but that's what I chose when I went deep holy. Inability to heal or DPS is what paladins give up going deep prot, and inability to heal or tank is what paladins should expect to give up by going deep ret.

If you want to be a hybrid, you're probably only going about 30 points or so into any given tree. Fanaticism is a 40-point talent will filled all the way. That essentially is committing you to deep ret and pigeonholing you as DPS. True hybrids probably wouldn't be deep enough in the ret tree to get that kind of threat reduction.

If you really want to encourage hybrid builds, petition Blizzard to thin up the protection tree. Standard tanking specs require putting 49 points into protection, that's way too many points for 1 role. Likewise, it wouldn't hurt to make sure retribution doesn't get so talent-heavy either with the new changes to the tree. Trees that allow you to accomplish what they were designed to do early in the tree allow for hybrid builds, even though it's at the cost of being more effective as that tree's role.

It may well be possible to have a hybrid build and play a viable role in raids. The problem is that no one has really defined that role, and until it's figured out, hybrid builds will never become accepted as raid specs and paladins will be forced into "pure" roles.

I would just like to add to my comment that ever since Blood Elves hit the scene you notice that Horde is more acceptant of retribution paladins BECAUSE more paladins are willing to heal and the occasional tank. You have paladins like Highborne (US) (BE Ret BT paladin) who deliver in the raid environment and Horde is willing to accept that but when you turn over to the Alliance side of things, the general WoW community has always had the mindset of paladins being healers and anything outside of a warrior tank priest/sham/pally/druid heal rest DPS makeup would be obsurde and just wouldn't work because they do no want to try it at all when builds like enhancement, retribution, elemental, shadow, feral, and boomkin all work really well (Ret more so soon than it does now) but many guilds don't want to try it even though it would be in the best itnerest of the guild to do so. I've also heard of a paladin Main Tanking BT (I think he was alliance) but for newer guilds or veteran guilds that would be out of the picture as paladins are not and never will be tanks in their minds.

Like Michal said... the proof is in the pudding. The more Paladins that throw up videos of themselves main tanking BT and etc... the more accepted other roles outside of Holy will be.

However, I think a side problem is that people might be afraid. The majority of WoW players look at each class and see one of the three talent trees as "crap" or just offspec. A discipline priest or survival hunter would get laughed out of the raid. Since Paladins are hybrids we want all three trees to be viable and we think it just isn't possible. (Oomkin druids are not a counterpoint.)

Since Ret was our "bad tree" it kept everyone not specced to Ret rather happy. All of a sudden Ret gets some rather significant buffs and people are worried that nerfs are going to come down somewhere else and ruin their build. Akin to how Holy Priest buffs came at the same time as some Shadow nerfs.

Holy Paladins are not as great a healer once you get further into the endgame. This has been stated by several leading guilds that once other healing classes (Priests, Shamans, Druids) begin to gear up to a certain point for end-end-game content (The Eye, Hyjal, BT) that Paladin deficiencies become more apparent in the healing areas - only 2 heals, one big, one small - they're usually assigned to main tank heal because they lack shields and HoTs and have trouble healing multiple targets and in this case BoP is fairly useless. They ARE mana efficient, but the other healing classes have more and better tools with which to do their jobs once having your healers go OOM is less of a problem. That being said, there is still a misconception of Paladins being these enormously overpowered healers, but they're really not. They're good healers, but they're definitely not substantially better than other healing classes - but because for some reason, people seem to think they are, raiding Paladins are often forced to spec Holy. One of the biggest things any Paladin regardless of spec, brings to the raid is his/her Blessings. Having Paladins putting up Kings, Might, Wisdom and Salvation is a huge boon to the raid and it's worth bringing along at least 3 in a 25 man setting just for Blessings.

There is no common misconception that Paladins are the best overall healers unless you're talking to misinformed people spending too much reading / writing QQ posts on the O-boards.

The healadin strength is narrowly focussed to one very specific type of healing, that is MT healing. Expanding this to mean "best healer overall" is a stretch nobody in their right mind would perform.

The real issue is about prestige: MT healer is percieved as the most prestigious healer role because it's the most visible. Similarly, part of the issue with tankadins has less to do with their abilities than the prestige tied to being the raid boss MT. There is most certainly a spot on may bossfights for a prot tank to pick and hold adds during a boss fight while the warriors or the bears handle the boss. Not to mention speeding up trash clearing to get to the boss in the first place. But as long as your average raid (not talking about the bleeding edge Catarsing few) appears stuck on the notion that one single MT has to handle it all, no real progress will be made.

Coming at this from a conceptual point of view, I see much the same problem for most other classes: a so-called "off-spec" is generally perceived as a useless anomaly.

I typically play my 70 shadow priest. I get blind invites to heal quite frequently; I've taken to the simple reply: "I'm shadow". I now refuse to heal a 70 instance because I know I don't have the gear or play-skill to main heal. However, I've *never* received an invite looking for a shadow priest. Yet when I run with an instance group, I *always* get comments from one or more players about how nice shadow-heal and mana regen is, how powerful MC is, etc, etc, etc.

I've also run several instances with a prot pally tank, and the threat management of a prot pally on big pulls (like SH or SL or SV 4, 5, 6 elite pulls) is IMO *far* better than that of a warrior. IMO a prot warrior shines as a single boss tank - but there aren't good tools to manage a big pull where you have 3-4 elites after CC. I even read about a raiding guild that forced all pallies to go holy to heal Kara, only to find that they could no longer run heroics cleanly because the warriors simply could not hold the big pulls.

Frankly, WoW / TBC is IMO *extremely* well-designed because there is no One Best spec. But most people are stuck in a mindset that there *has* to be that One Best spec, and won't be convinced otherwise!

Therefore, IMO the pally issues are symptomatic of a larger 'problem'. People have a hard time understanding other classes and even other specs within their own class, and dismiss the viability of alternate builds. Combine that with a mixture of experiences (especially grouping with badly-played or badly-geared toons) and biases and prejudices are born and cemented into place...

This is a pretty enlightening post for me. A lot of pally discussions do seem whiney and wishy-washy, as if they really do not know what they want. The same can be true for a few other hybrid classes like shaman and especially druid. People read various posts on a topic and assume they come from a camp of people who generally agree. I guess this is not always true. Maybe folks should sign their posts with their faction attached, like tankadin, etc.

A nice write up as Paladins just seem odd as a community sometimes. I think of it this way is a family. Its like War of the Roses (Movie). Like been at Love and War all at same time.

I always sympathize with the four specs as you call it though I mostly only see three tree day to day.

There have been times honestly as a Protection Paladin when every single paladin i see is a Holy Paladin. And on my server its what i see 9/10 times for every raiding paladin. When i seen that often i've wonder just why every single one is Holy. I'm smart enough to know why that is. Yet i quietly wonder to myself when in some guilds if Paladins don't think for them self vs been forced to re-spec by their guilds just so they could raid.

From my very first day as a Paladin i never set out to be a Tank. Who knows what the heck a tank is at level 1 let alone at level 10. I remember choosing my Paladin to be a "Defender" and not to be a Healer or DPS. But a Mighty "Defender" of my Comrads. To simple say it just like a Doctor specializes in a occupation. Thats just how i play my paladin specialized in my role i play.

I also don't do Instance healing. I'll throw a heal, i'll save your life or do what ever at any other time if i can or emergency. I've been spec and trained all my Paladin life as a Defender and its what i'm good at and its what i'll keep doing. If a guild simply cannot accept me for what i'm good at, its not a guild i want to be in irregardless how good that guild is.

But yes the Paladin community with ever class asking for something different does seem to be at Love & War among themselves more so than any other class it seems oftenly enough all the time. When one tree gets a buff for the good of the entire class, one tree cries foul, another tree rejoice and another remain what seem neutral. Its a Odd community.

I think this is a really great post and sums up the problems paladins have with getting what they want--to the world at large we must seem extraordinarily shizophrenic. It's easy to see why it is so hard to make gains as a class when we're all looking for different things.

I think in the early days of WoW we were all hybrid faction, but given the nature of the end game we became something we weren't supposed to be, and there's been no going back as new paladins have "grown up" under the current system. It's so much easier to pick a single tree, figure out ways to improve the one role that tree facilitates, and agitate for its improvement in one voice. That's why holy originally became powerful, why protection eventually came into its own, and why retribution is making strides now. To advocate hybridness in a unified manner, you first have to have a consensus on what being a hybrid even means. That's pretty damn difficult, despite good ideas I've seen on this blog and elsewhere. So the paladin infighting we experience bothers me, especially because I'm not immune to it.

[Background] I've never been comfortable with the idea of a paladin who, all things considered, would prefer that someone else get hurt instead of them. And that's what a holy paladin is to me. Don't get me wrong, I know holy paladins take plenty of hits, especially in PvP, but I think the holy paladin is generally at his happiest when he's not getting hurt and he can devote his full attention to healing his party. That's just not a paladin to me. I put the emphasis on warrior in the phrase "holy warrior"...i.e. paladins belong in melee.

I've always wanted to be what I call the Swiss Army Renaissance Paladin (the SARP!)--having a ton of useful little tools but being a master of nothing. In vanilla WoW I was 31/20 ret/holy (later 41/20 when the pre-BC patch came out); I ran 5 mans and BGs as mostly a 2-handed melee fighter, but stopping to off-heal/off-tank when necessary--a fluid hybrid. I wore as much int and spell damage plate as I could so I'd be able to do reasonable damage, and be able to take a hit or two, but also drop things mid-battle and land some decent heals. I also kept a stamina/defense heavy tank set for OT situations, but these were rare; I mostly protected people through cunning use of stuns and blessings. I miss playing like that, but BC killed the SARP in my opinion. I picked the route that I perceived would best ensure I got to fight in melee--the protection tank. I learned how to tank properly and was exposed to the joys of AoE grinding, but I lost much of my ability to heal or lolDPS in a party. [/Background]

This upcoming patch really amuses and confuses me in a twisted way. I've always held out hope that ret would make a comeback and I could return to what I used to do. But the evolution of ret isn't what is making me amused/confused--I think they're just allowing another form of restrictive play where you can do one thing really well and 2 things terribly. No, what has me flustered is the fact that the fluid hybrid may be coming back, and it's the holy paladin!

With this +healing to +damage change that's coming down the pipe, I feel like the holy paladin is going to be in the best position to fight or heal at any given moment. They're going to be geared, in essence, like I used to be--plate with int and damage, AND they'll get the full +healing too! And I don't know...I feel like they don't deserve it. I feel like they've propped up a definition of a paladin that is false, and are being rewarded for it. I even feel like they're still going to stand back and let others do most of the fighting. Simultaneously, I'm a little afraid that they're going to be overpowered and the entire class may get nerfed as a result, somehow. Mostly, I'm probably afraid I'm going to be tempted to turn my back on everything I've always stood for as a paladin. I don't want to be an enemy of the holy paladin. And yet more and more I feel like rooting against them. I know how things got this way, but...how the hell did things get this way?

So the holy pally "buff" as well as all healing classes "buff" won't make us big time damage dealers. what it will do is make grinding bearable. Now all three pally trees will be decent to grind with. (MY sympathy in this regard is with full prot warriors. . they really hurt when grinding)

Surely the answer to anyone who has a prot warrior or any other class that cant grind well, is to level an alt?

Even though my paladin is retri it still slow work grinding..

I use my 70 Boomkin to grind with! She kills quicker, has outdoors CC so doesnt usually need much attention healing wise.. Obviously she cant take on multiple targets the way Firelight can with aoe, but loot for single mobs Boomers FTW!

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=2509266987&postId=25734462202&sid=1#0My suggestion to solve the hybrid complaints to the current implementation of threat reduction to retribution.

Instead of putting it in Fanaticism, put it in 2H weapon spec. No sane ret/prot hybrid will try to tank with a 2H equipped... right? And it's still sufficiently high in the tree to be found only on primarily retribution paladins.

Blizzard does seem to believe that if you want to do something other than what you are spec'd for, it's time to respec. I can't cite, but I have definitely heard a Blizzard poster saying that with the money flowing as it is in TBC, you should be able to respec to do what is needed of you, when it is needed.

Thus, threat reduction deep in the Ret tree. This is a buff to dps, but a nerf to hybridity, at least fluid.

Not saying I agree with this, but that just seems to be Blizzard's stance. If you're that deep in Ret, stop off-tanking or don't put points in that talent.

With the spell damage on healing gear coming out, we may see a new way to dps/heal as a paladin, but not necessarily melee/heal since it is of course spell damage.

How then, does Paladins & Shamans as a whole get slotted into a Hybrid slot.....

When ever I complain about being an elemental shaman (caster) they call me a hybrid, but as an elemental build, I don't heal and I don't melee....so technically I'm not a hybrid I'm just a caster....

Same goes for Paladins, I still don't understand why blizzard don't just make all 3 specs indiviually viable, and allow them not to clash with one and other, for example if I was to spec full 61/0/0 in any three specs, as a shaman, Enhancement (DPS)/ Elemental (DPS) / Restoration (Healing), then I should be euqally as good as any other class, who does that 1 piticular thing as well...

Same goes for Paladins, they are Holy (Healing)/ Protection (Tanking)/ Retribution (DPS) but they don't do it....why??? Infact the recent changes to the shaman class in 2.3, escpecailly Elemental has made me close my account....I just hate being told my class as a whole is a Hybrid, when the game forces our hybrid behind to be pigeonhold into a specific field....for example a tanking paldin can't heal, lets face it a protection paladin doesnt heal a 5 man instance, and can't DPS to the same degree and retri can, I certainly wouldnt heal a 5 man as elemental, or as enhancement, so how can we be considered hybrids...

As I see it, the only real fluid hybrid gear in the game is owned by druids. Their DS3 set and Feral Arena gear has itemization for all 5 base stats, and +healing.

Well, druids are a hybrid class just as much as paladins/shaman. Why don't paladins and shaman see that kind of gear anymore?

People complained that they weren't allowed to pigeonhole themselves. Raiders didn't want to bring hybrids, they wanted people good at one job to fulfill one role within a certain spec. While they could spec for that, they couldn't gear for it.

Short of mish-mashing gear sets together, and working within some kind of weird 26/14/21ish spec, paladins can't be fluid hybrids, and even then it would most likely be a clumsy affair at best.

The game isn't effectively designed around them doing that either, Blizzard expects us not to hybrid anymore from what I've seen in raiding. The fifth-man element is gone when you have more than 5 people. Everything is sectioned in such a way that there's no good place for hybrids.

When I first rolled a paladin on alliance back around the time Naxx came out, I took many long looks at the talent calculators, trying to find a spec to maximize all 3 aspects of the raiding game within one character and the limited number of talent points I had. I couldn't find much, honestly, but wish I had.

The point is not to compete with anyone for top spot on the healing/damage meters, or to have the most damage mitigation in a raid. It's to do about half or even a third as good as those who are unable to do any of those things. To heal better than a priest with no points in holy, to tank better than a warrior with no points in prot, to dps better than a tank-spec'd character. To be able to do whatever is needed, based on the changing environments of the raiding experience.

I fully agree with what Larry said. As a ret pally I was always expected to offtank mobs in raids. Being full ret specced it was difficult to hold aggro even with righteous fury. Then main tank who is also my GM would get a pissy about it. I was like come on dude, I am here for dps not tanking, if you need an offtank grab this druid or even your fury warrior, but he was always pulling me. At the end of the raid people would say stuff about me being at the bottom of the damage meter and I would have to constantly remind them that I offtanked for half the raid. It is the same with healing, even in my heal set my healing sucks, 0 pts in holy doesn't go far. I am not wasting my little mana to heal you when I need it for myself. This is why there are 3 diff specs and hybrid. I am ret, let me do my job.

"Holy Paladins are not as great a healer once you get further into the endgame. This has been stated by several leading guilds that once other healing classes (Priests, Shamans, Druids) begin to gear up to a certain point for end-end-game content (The Eye, Hyjal, BT) that Paladin deficiencies become more apparent in the healing areas - only 2 heals, one big, one small - they're usually assigned to main tank heal because they lack shields and HoTs and have trouble healing multiple targets and in this case BoP is fairly useless. They ARE mana efficient, but the other healing classes have more and better tools with which to do their jobs once having your healers go OOM is less of a problem. That being said, there is still a misconception of Paladins being these enormously overpowered healers, but they're really not. They're good healers, but they're definitely not substantially better than other healing classes - but because for some reason, people seem to think they are, raiding Paladins are often forced to spec Holy. One of the biggest things any Paladin regardless of spec, brings to the raid is his/her Blessings. Having Paladins putting up Kings, Might, Wisdom and Salvation is a huge boon to the raid and it's worth bringing along at least 3 in a 25 man setting just for Blessings."

Although I do agree with Larry on knowing a paladin's limitations as multiple target healers,you need to also give credit due to those skilled players who can do amazing things with a mediocre build.It's all about who's driving the wheel when it comes to total effective healing.